“We have wounded!”
Came the call, as about a dozen of the twenty people who had went out came in carried. Seth himself carried three of them, as they rest were put on makeshift stretchers. Behind them came a huddling mass of people; prisoners, no doubt. I was ready for this. A couple of the houses near the entrance into the cove had been set up as a triage center where I could heal those wounded during tonight’s assault.
“Bring them here!” I call back, “Where the lights are!”
We had already gone out and gotten the two generators left behind by the Order of the White Ones in the first camp Nyt and cleared, and confiscated their trucks as well. With a very liberal application of Earthen Spike, Create Hole, and the General’s ingenious use of makeshift camoflauge, we were able to store the trucks captured in an underground area within the orchard. It took a couple of days to create, but it was worth it. Soon, we’ll have a whole armada of armored vehicles.
The worst off of the milita was a man who looks as if he had been run through by the horns of some animal. Seth had frozen the wound so he wouldn’t bleed out, but the plug of ice was quicklky beginning to thaw. I pull the plug from his stomach and cast Medium Heal on him. The wound begins to seal up, and the pain begins to lessen. He’s able to walk out of the building. He hugs me and thanks me, and I send him on his way to look at the next one.
Most of the injured were things like animal bites, broken bones from extreme blunt force; one claimed that he had been pinned under a car, that Seth had lifted off of him. Judging by the twisted state of his leg, I couldn’t help but believe it. Some of the people who had come here with medical knowledge set the broken leg in a splint made of branches and belts. I healed what damage I could, but my healing spells weren’t strong enough to heal broken bones in other people, as moving and converging mana in injured parts of my own body was vastly more easy than moving and converging mana in another’s. Regardless, I healed the exterior wounds, and he was put on rest for a month. After him it was pretty easy going; bullet wounds, cuts, and bruises. The prisoners of the cult all had the same faraway look in their eyes.
After healing them, I went out and helped expand the storage area to fit the howitzer; being dragged along by a large humvee they had captured that night as well. It takes about an hour to dig, and support another layer, and set sandbags up so it woudn’t flood. What was with the rain? In all of my life living here, I don’t remember a single year it rained this much. Perhaps the interference of Roki and Efra had something to do with it.
After it was all said and done, and the storage area expanded, Seth and I carry in the pair of generators they had seized from the cult, and the drums of gasoline that would help power them into Efra and set them up with the others. A few of the people who Paul had gotten in contact with were eletricians, with the help of some copper wire and wood, they began to connect some of the closer houses to the burgeoning power center.
When we first strung up the lights, the Efrans looked at it with a bit of curiosity that turned into amazement once they were connected. “Like globes of stars,” one said.
“Are Paul and Dylan out?” Seth asked as he lifted the 50 gallon drum and tilted it into the funnel that led into the half-empty generator.
“Yeah. They’re with Fen.”
Seth had consoled with Ullr the night that we made the Pact of the Four Peaks. The morning after I had been approached by both Jenna and Dylan, asking if Dylan could join in the fight some way.
“She’s too young.” I argued.
But Jenna told me that Dylan wanted to join an expedition to find Monica, once my scrying the night before helped me find her, within the sprawling city and cave system beneath the Ir city that most of the doors in Porterville lead to.
I still tried to argue my point, but they used the logic I had used with Seth about his son joining.
“It’ll be a help for the coming age,” they said, “And she’ll be getting a head start when the five years are up.”
Still, I argued that she was too young. But a single sentence from the young girl was all it took to change my mind. She looked at me ruefully and near whispered.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
“I don’t want to be vulnerable like that again.”
I hesitated for a moment, and she told me of her time being captured by the ratmen; the torture she endured. The daily beatings, and the forced fasts. For two weeks she waited beneath a temple, waiting to either be saved or to be rescued.
Instead of sleeping that evening, I snuck out and closed all of the doors in the orchard and on the road leading up to Seth’s house from the highway. Thanks to that I was able to get from level 68 to level 82, and unlocked the ability to Quick Cast Djinn’s Volley, and purchased the skill Telepathy and Djinn’s Blade — a crescent wave of flame and wind, and Mire. A spell that combined earth and water to create a mire wherever I demand. It was useful. A pair of minotaur were charging at me over a bridge spanning a gorge, and I cast Mire in their path. The first quickly sank as it tried to struggle, and fell clean through the bridge, while the other managed to completely cross it. Fifteen balls of white hot flames slamming into its face, however, put an end to that. It was difficult dragging both of them back.
When I asked her the following morning if she was serious about this, she merely nodded. So I talked to Reynard, and used the Temple Authority to initiate her. Her eyes immediately fluttered shut, and a Shard manifested on the ground next to her, along with a short sword. She wanted to be like Monica, she said when she woke up. I couldn’t blame her.
Nyt taught her and Seth — who decided to use a spear, the basics of their weapons, and mana manipulation, and after Fen was finished with the Shrine of Athet, he was asked to lead them on expeditions while Nyt meditated and tried to connect with whatever strand of her goddess she could find.
Under the shroud of night, I would go out and close nearby doors, and during the days I would come back and check back in on Monica with Far Sight. I tried to communicate with Telepathy to let her know that we were going to come for her once we could, but she was too far for my skill to work. Thanks to my night time adventures, I was able to make it to rank 10 in the world rankings. It was then that I decided to take hold of the moniker Sage. Which surprisingly hadn’t been taken. Granted, most of the top spots were reserved for melee builds; warriors, duelists, and the like.
I would bring back the bodies of whatever I killed; they were edible, as it turned out. Minotaur meat is a lot like beef, while Satyr’s meat is a lot like goat, apparently. They also gave you temporary buffs to Strength and Endurance, respectively. The broth made from their bones did the same. Their horns were good for a variety of things, and their fur and leather could be used to make clothes; which were in short supply in the cove. These clothes also granted boosts to Strength and Endurance. Both Seth and I made sure that Paul and Dylan wore a complete set whenever they left.
Their heart blood, as it turns out, was good for enchanting ink. Sir Lior showed me how to make it; mix the blood with a bit of the creature’s bone, some sea water, and something the ash of a fire started with magic. I provided the ash, and he showed me how he carved intricate letters into the carved horns of a minotaur to make a ring that soothed anxiety to give to one of the women in the cove who suffered from frequent night terrors and woke up everyone around her by screaming. I made some ink while stuck within the cove, waiting until I got the go ahead from Seth to finally leave during the night, which I finally got last night.
I tested the ink out on the guns of one of the trucks; I used the blade of my dagger to scrawl the word, ‘spitfire,’ into one of the black barrels of the 50 cal on the back.
A quick test of shooting it into the wall revealed that it left a scorch mark in the earthen walls. I went to another and, following Reynard’s suggestion months prior, inscribed the phrase,
“I invoke thee, oh thou beings of flame that dwell within the scorching realms, and beseech thee to lend thy breath.”
I pulled the trigger, and the gun exploded in a small fireball, and sent me rocketing backward. I healed the damage it caused, and buried the truck far, far, far beneath the underground storage. I spent the rest of that night carving, “spitfire,” on the barrels of other the other 50 cals, and unlocked the passive ability Enchanting.
“Where’s Nyt?” Seth asked as he hoisted a barrel of gasoline up to the fuel tank of the generator. I held the funnel firmly in place.
“She’s still at the shrine.” I answered.
“How much longer?”
“About three weeks, Fen said.”
Seth sighed.
“I’m worried about the people of Springville.” He said once the tank was topped off.
He set the 50 gallon drum on the ground and rolled it toward the others.
“Me too.” I responded. “I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”
“My mom and dad are up there.” He said, “It’s taking all of my strength to just not go up there right this second.”
“What were the estimated forces again?”
I was hungover during the meeting with the scouts the other day, so I didn’t really focus on the reports.
“About 2000 enemies all together.” Was the answer, “Efrans and humans both. Can’t you scry?”
I shake my head. I had tried before, but all I got when I sent my consciousness to that area was a swirling, rumbling haze, as if were the eye of a great storm.
“Will I be able to join the next assault?” I ask.
Seth thinks for a moment before shaking his head wistfully.
“No, I’m sorry. If it weren’t for the fact that Laura is good as all hell at talking, the patrols would have snatched us up right away tonight.”
“What did she say?”
“Well, she said that we were on the lookout for you.” He said with a laugh, “And that they were going to split the money evenly among our families.”
“Quick thinking.” I said with a sigh. “I feel like I’m stagnating here.”
“I understand that feeling.” He responded, “I was stuck in that cave for two weeks.”
I sighed once more.
“When’s the next attack going to be?”
I had a plan to create some accessories for the militia.
“The day after tomorrow. Tonight, some of us are going back to search the house thoroughly tomorrow, and I still need to shut the door there.”
“Do you need help with that?”
He chuckled.
“No no, it’s only a level 45. I can handle it.”
I clicked my tongue in disappointment.